Happy Player… Sad Player… by Igor Saavedra

Considering that music is an Art form, and that “Art” is probably the most sublime way to express the very essentials of our existence, then it seems obvious that through playing music that we can learn very much about “The Art of Living…”

What I’ll write here is just my opinion…

There are trillions of questions in this world to be made, and I’m convinced that all of them have some kind of answer, with just one exception….

As a form of a psychological exercise…

If you ask somebody why they would choose a particular house, you might get the answer, “Because it’s big!”

If you then ask why they need a big home, they might respond, “Because it can fit the whole family!”

If you ask again why this is important, the answer can be, “Because this is good for creating links between all the family individuals and supporting each other.”

The next question will be, why is creating links and supporting each other is important? And the answer will be, “Because you will constantly feel that you are not alone in this world and that you are going to get help when you need it and also be able to provide it to the others.”

Which leads you to ask, why do you like to feel supported and at the same time provide support to your family? And the answer will be, “Because it makes me happy!”

The final question is obvious…. Why do you want to be happy? That question has no answer…

In my opinion, the purpose of this life is happiness itself, that purpose has no secondary purpose… it’s the final achievement, and you don’t need a ‘reason’ to be happy!

That being said, IF happiness is the most important thing in life (even further than Love itself because the question “Why to love” has an obvious answer, then in my opinion that means we can measure intelligence based on “The ability of any human being to live through happiness…” and not on the ability to know, solve or achieve any other thing in life.

That’s REAL intelligence for me!

What is happiness? Well in my opinion, it is something very simple… “Happiness is an attitude.”

Life is what it is, and highly overused phrases like “Looking for happiness”, “The search of happiness”, “Trying to find happiness”, etc., really misguide people, because happiness is not something you have to look for, instead happiness is something you have to LIVE right and here right now; every hour, minute and second of your life!

The key is very simple: “Developing the ability to always find and focus on the goodness ‘within’ the goodness and mostly, the goodness ‘within the badness”

Have you met a rich person that is never satisfied? For example… that 17-year-old daughter that receives a brand new red Ferrari for her birthday and when she sees it she starts screaming and crying because that was not the color she wanted. She begins to blame her father for not listening to her and explains to him that all of her friends have red Ferraris and that she wants to be the only one with a different color! This young lady didn’t invent this behavior; she has seen it many times throughout the years in her parents and friend’s attitudes.

“That’s the ability to see the badness within the goodness… the most perfect way to achieve unhappiness in your life”

At the same time, have you meet this very poor people that are really in trouble, seriously sick, have almost nothing, and yet for some unknown reason always have a smile on their faces and a handy joke on their mouths every five seconds?

“That’s the ability to find the goodness within the badness… the most perfect way to achieve happiness in your life”

But the real truth is that you are probably not ultra-rich or super-poor, instead you are probably a normal human being, a normal musician trying to live and be happy like most of us. And you find yourself asking, what has all this philosophical matter have to do with music?

Everything!

As I’ve learned throughout my life as a musician, music MUST be one of the maximum expressions of joy and happiness that a human being can feel and experience. While you play it, music has the power to reveal in just a second what kind of human being you are. In relation to this, we have mainly two types of musicians that I’m certain you’ll be able to immediately recognize within your friends, bass colleagues and music heroes.

“The Unhappy Musician” That bitter being who’s always complaining about everything, who never likes or is satisfied with what he hears from himself or from others (mostly from the others hahaha). The kind of guy that when it comes to play, immediately behaves like a selfish and bitter human being, scared about everything, worrying if the other players are making him look bad because they are really bad or too good… complaining about a thousand things and transforming the whole musical experience in something very similar to a military context.

“The Happy Musician” That positive being that is always happy to play and really doesn’t care if somebody is not making him look good and not doing the proper thing. Or if somebody plays better than him, he is the kind of guy who is not thinking as a teacher while he plays and evaluating and correcting everything he hears and prefers to share and live the experience from a radically different perspective, that being to see the others as brothers and not as bad behaved sons, students or subjects…. that means through love and happiness!

Take a look and see if any of your friends… and mostly yourself fit within either of these two descriptions. And mainly, think about the importance of happiness in life, “Be intelligent /be happy”, don’t be searching for happiness, “Just live it night now!”